RADICAL ACTS OF CARE: ACT IV

Marietjie Pauw & Garth Erasmus

August 27 – September 27, 2020

Something In Return

Marietjie Pauw & Garth Erasmus | South Africa | Improvised performances for various instruments | 2020 Working within the constrictions of their home environments during lockdown in South Africa, Pauw and Erasmus created these improvisational pieces by trading recordings back and forth via text message, ultimately layering multi-track compositions. Their intent with this work was to stay in touch, to have fun, and to take care of their creative side against the unknowns of the pandemic. Pauw plays the Boehm flute, while Erasmus performs on handcrafted traditional Khoi instruments. Their impulses of sound, or what Erasmus calls "knots of time and place", host a backdrop of memories etched by diseases racial, cultural, and economic. —Greg de Cuir Jr. All artworks courtesy of Marietjie Pauw & Garth Erasmus. Double portrait (previous slide): Aryan Kaganof

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Marietjie Pauw

Marietjie Pauw obtained a doctoral degree in music at the University of Stellenbosch in 2015. Her artistic research engages with the curating and performance of South African flute compositions, and free improvisation, as decolonial aesthetics. She is a post-doctoral researcher at Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation, University of Stellenbosch. Since 2015 her improvisatory work with sonic and visual Khoi activist artist Garth Erasmus has created openings into exploring decolonial, site-specific aspects of music-making.

Garth Erasmus

Garth Erasmus is a visual artist and musician. One of his large-scale mural artworks is included in an installation depicting first peoples of the Western Cape at Artscape Theatre, Cape Town. His audio installation Autshumato is at the Robben Island Museum (Nelson Mandela Gateway, Cape Town). Garth is part of the activist music and poetry group Khoi Khonnexion, who toured European music festivals in 2018-19. He is also part of the free jazz group As Is.

Double portrait of Marietjie Pauw and Garth Erasmus (above): Aryan Kaganof